Baptized in Fire
by Nono le mog
Summary: Tony is smart and resourceful; his escape from the Ten Rings proved that. But sometimes, things only get worse. What if Rhodey hadn't been the first one to find Tony in the desert?
1. Chapter 1: Out of the frying pan

Big thanks to my betas, equalopportunityobsessor and MelancholyMadness, for helping me with this chapter.

This fic will probably be pretty long and I don't work with a schedule so you might want to subscribe if you plan to read it...

This is a work in progress: I will add relevant warnings at the beginning of each chapter. Please proceed cautiously if you are likely to be triggered by physical or psychological torture. Tell me if you think that there are triggers I didn't tag yet.

I put it in the "Avengers" section, but the Winter Soldier is not listed as a character, and it starts during the first Iron Man movie, so it's not really accurate... Big spoiler ahead for the Iron Man and Captain America movies (especially CA:TWS).

English is not my first language, I'm not an expert on the movies and I can make mistakes: please tell me if you see anything weird!

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><p>The hot Afghan air filled his mouth with blood and dust. He felt like he was choking. Yinsen was <em>dead<em>. Tony should have realized what the doctor had meant when he said he would be "seeing his family". _So much for being a genius._

_Idiot._ He felt so useless. What kind of man was he if he couldn't even save the one man that needed him? His only consolation was the thought of revenge... and then, escape.

_Don't waste your life._

With one last look for Yinsen, Tony rose from the stone floor of the cave. He had a life to live, mistakes to fix. Scaring away the terrorists was easy; his priority was to destroy every last Stark weapon from the camp. He was soon pretty sure that he had succeeded (the whole place had been blown up), and as the shooting resumed around him, he took off into the sky.

But the moments of freedom were just that: moments. Before he knew it, he'd crashed into the sand in his half-reduced-to-pieces armor.

"Not bad," he said to himself, impressed, before picking himself up to begin his trek under the desert sun.

He didn't make it far. He was hurt, dehydrated, and hadn't eaten properly in a few months. His muscles ached more and more with every step and another layer of sand crusted to his face with every bead of sweat. Luckily, after what could only have been a few hours – it had felt like weeks, but the sun was still high in the sky – the sound of helicopter blades turning sounded from above. A black helicopter was headed straight for him. Relief swept his body. He took one feeble step, staggered, and fell to his knees.

Before the helicopter could land, a dark-haired man jumped out, onto the sand in front of him. With military-like posture, he stalked towards Tony.

_Wait. Is his arm metal? Who _is _this guy?_

Contrary to what was widely believed, Tony still had a shred of survival instinct left in his body, and at the moment, it screamed to him to get the hell away from that man. He'd never seen him before, couldn't justify why the hair on his arms were standing on end, but there was almost something... animalistic about him. He didn't walk. He prowled, as if he was a tiger and Tony the defenseless prey. Which was, sadly, probably the truth, if the people in this helicopter were not the help he had been waiting for.

He desperately tried to scramble back, possibly stand up, but to no avail. A metallic hand closed on the front of his shirt, yanking him off his feet and forward. Up close, the guy was more than terrifying. Not only because of the obvious reasons, like his extremely evident muscular build that made him look as if he could snap Tony in two, or the guns sticking visibly out of his belt (okay, maybe that was part of it…). No, the reason that he'd rather take on an angry bear than stay with the man in front of him for another five seconds was that his eyes were _dead_. Dark hollow caverns that held no sympathy, no concentration, just a cold detached disinterest that chilled him straight to the arc reactor. Tony gulped and tried to struggle, but his attempts were futile. The muzzle of a gun pressed into his left temple and Tony sighed in defeat.

His hands held high in surrender, he allowed himself to be dragged back to the helicopter, and, his vision already swimming, felt a prick in his neck, before the darkness swallowed him whole.

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><p>When Tony came to, he was lying down on what he guessed, from the sound of the engine, was the floor of a van, probably a Russian one. His hands were tightly handcuffed behind his back. He groaned and tried to raise his head, but the strain was too much, so he set it back down, exhausted. He had no idea what those bastards had given to him, but he still felt like all his thoughts had to dig their way through dense fog. Even his tongue seemed leaden.<p>

He felt the vicious kick to his ribcage before he registered it. The grunt he made seemed out of time. Tony wondered if he had, in fact, grunted on time and just hadn't realized it, or if he was just grunting because it was the thing to do when you got kicked in the ribs. _Probably the first_. _And why would that even matter?_

"He's waking up," a man called from somewhere above him, maybe the one who had kicked him? "Isn't it a little early? We won't be there for another half an hour..."

Another voice answered. "He will wait." While the first one had seemed annoyed (and perhaps slightly worried), that one was deep, cold and emotionless. _Wonder who that is,_ Tony thought sarcastically. _Great._

When they stopped – probably thirty minutes later – the drugs still weren't out of his system and dehydration left his head drooping. He was too weak to fight when the strong human hand of the metal-armed man caught him by the arm and hoisted him upward. His feet scraped along the ground as he was dragged out of the vehicle. He tried to regain his footing, but had little success.

The air wasn't as dry as it had been before: they had probably left the desert. After a few moments, the blinding light and stifling heat were brutally replaced by darkness and cold, that soon, as he grew accustomed to them, became artificial light and nicely cool air. A building, then. A short walk later, he was shoved forward, but the hand gripping him from behind stopped him from falling on his face.

'Welcome, Mr. Stark,' a cold German-accented voice greeted.

The man holding him suddenly pushed him forward, but before he had enough time to straighten up, the German man gripped his throat and lifted him up until he was just barely on his toes. He tried to speak, but only gurgling sounds came out, half from the pressure on his throat and half from his swollen tongue. He blinked hazily.

The man in front of him was tall, taller than he was, and his face was completely bland apart from the smile that stretched his lips without reaching his eyes. The man scrutinized him for one more second, squeezed the soft spot below his jaw, and let him drop to his knees.

"He appears to be in perfect condition," the man said.

_Yeah right, _Tony thought.

"Perfect. Put him to work as soon as possible. He will be a valuable acquisition to HYDRA."

_Oh hell no_, Tony thought. HYDRA sounded suspiciously like the Nazi organization that Captain America fought against during the Second World War (that is, if the stories his father had told him were true). Tony may have been naive enough to be business partners with terrorists, but he was not stupid enough to help _Nazis._

"Yes, sir!" the voice of the man that had kicked him in the van answered from behind him.

In one last ditch effort to escape, he tried to jerk out of his captor's grip, but he was easily ripped back towards the man and received a punch to the gut for his efforts. He swore silently, tears prickling his eyes from the pain. Without a word, he was manhandled through another door, lucky enough, this time, to right himself on both feet, but still unable to stop moving. They only walked for a few minutes before he was unbound and thrown on a concrete floor. He barely managed to roll to avoid hitting his head on the ground as the door closed behind him, locking him inside.

"Well, fuck," he breathed.

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><p>He was tired, and hungry, and so fucking <em>cold<em>. The small, unappetizing "meal" he had eaten a few hours ago hadn't helped: he knew that he was kept in this state on purpose. Now that he wasn't drugged anymore, he could move freely, but he felt terribly weak. He didn't know for how long he had been there, but if he was receiving two meals a day as he thought, it had been around two weeks. And they had not asked him for a single thing.

He knew what it was, of course. It was a form of torture, one far more refined and effective than anything the Ten Rings could come up with. He wanted to say that he would not break, but it was _hard_. The time in this small, cold room, completely bare, had left him weaker than he had ever been. After the cave, it was too much. He was ready to give up his pride just for a warm shower, some real food and a night in a bed. And he had precisely zero idea about how he could escape.

Suddenly, jerking him out of his doze, what sounded suspiciously like a distant explosion rattled the room. He jumped to his feet – well, he tried, it was actually more like scrambling – and cautiously approached the door. It was still locked and made of steel, and he had checked it a dozen times in the beginning, so he didn't need to try again to know that he couldn't open it, but he really hoped that whoever was coming wouldn't leave him there.

Indeed, after a wait during which he heard muffled shouting and running on the other side of the door, it opened to reveal a few people dressed in black and carrying guns.

"Who...?" he managed to get out from his parched and sore throat. He hadn't drunk enough in the last few weeks, and hadn't had anyone to speak to: he was a little rusty...

"Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistic Division, sir," a young man who didn't even look to be twenty-five answered. "Who are you?"

He wondered how it was possible for him not to be recognized, before remembering that he had disappeared for probably more than three months, was likely supposed dead, had lost weight, hadn't shaved for two weeks and was very, very dirty. The boy had no reason to expect Tony Stark, billionaire playboy, to be this filthy bearded stranger in a HYDRA base.

Before he could open his mouth to answer, however, a gun went off and the man suddenly fell to the ground. Pushed behind the fighting men, Tony could only watch as each one was hit by a single bullet between the eyes.

The sniper appeared at the corner of the hallway. It was the man with the metal arm.

Without thinking, he bolted toward the opposite direction, hoping that there was an exit that way. No, who was he kidding? He wasn't even thinking that far... Hoping to get as far as possible from the room he had been trapped in and the man he had been trapped by. Intellectually, he knew that it was useless, that in the state he was in, he wasn't going to go very far, but it was instinct. _Don't stay here._

He ran a few meters before the man caught up with him and slammed him into the wall by his throat. Black spot started dancing at the corners of his eyes and he went limp, recognizing a lost battle: he wasn't getting out today. The adrenaline was receding, leaving only weakness and exhaustion in its wake.

However, the man didn't seem interested in the cell anymore. Holding him by the upper arm, he started dragging Tony through the hallway. It was mostly deserted, and anyone still alive ended up shot in the forehead – HYDRA, or whatever organization the men from before had been, the man didn't make any distinction. They soon reached a door that led them outside, where a helicopter sat, apparently waiting for them.

_Not again,_ he thought tiredly when he felt a needle sting his arm. While he was slowly blacking out on the floor of the aircraft, his eyes fell on a small cluster of agents that were watching them from the ground, led by a scowling woman looking at him with a gun in her hands and a glare on her face. She was shooting at the vehicle, but he didn't stay conscious long enough to know whether it had any effect.

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><p>This time, he woke up shackled to a chair. Well, that brought back some very unfortunate memories... At least this time, he had no bag on his head, and he could feel the reassuring hum of the arc-reactor in his chest.<p>

A bald, old-looking man was sitting in front of him in an armchair, fingertips touching in front of his lips. Seriously, could this become any more cliche? The only thing missing was a big white cat.

...Well, apparently the snark was still the first part of him to wake up...

Tony still felt groggy, but not half as bad as the time after his escape from the cave. He felt coherent enough to be sure of one thing: he had to pretend to cooperate, couldn't afford to refuse because he couldn't take another fucking day of torture: it would _break_ him. Whatever that man was going to ask, he would have to play along. Even if it was about building weapons. Hell, if it meant that they were willing to let him access explosive, it wouldn't even be a bad thing...

"Are you ready to work for us, Mr. Stark?" the man asked on, his voice saccharine.

The genius hung his head, trying to look even more defeated than he felt.

"Very well. You are going to repair a... device, think of it as a test... If you really cooperate, I will see about giving you a more important task. The Winter Soldier will be your guard; I wouldn't recommend doing anything stupid, as he has been known to be somewhat extreme in his reaction to stupidity. But for now... Asset, take him to the shower, he stinks."

The same metal-armed man from before – the Winter Soldier, probably – unshackled him and grabbed him by his upper arm. A lot more alert than the previous times he had been in this position, Tony managed to walk fast enough to keep what was left of his dignity, and followed to what looked like some changing room shower. Ugh. Nazis and showers, bad association. He stopped in his tracks.

"Undress here and clean up."

His voice was still completely emotionless, almost like a robot – except that Tony knew JARVIS, and JARVIS voice was nothing like that – but, he also noticed, hoarse from disuse. Apparently, he didn't talk much. Well, Tony was nothing if not ready to fill the silence...

"Is that a joke?", he started, pleasantly surprised by how steady his voice sounded after the first two syllables, despite the hoarseness created by dehydration and silence. "I'm supposed to just get naked here in front of your tender eyes and at least a dozen security cameras?" He swept an arm around to the various surveillance devices in the room.

The Soldier didn't answer, although his eyebrows had lifted a little. He didn't really need to call his bluff, since it was pretty obvious that the genius didn't have a choice. And despite what he had just said, Tony didn't care about being naked in front of anyone (and hadn't since the eighties), least of all him: he was well aware that his vulnerability had very little to do with his state of undress, and the man looked as interested as a rock. An extremely unimpressed rock. But Tony needed to talk to someone or something that wasn't himself, because he felt broken and aching after the days he had spent in isolation, and snark gave him at least the illusion that he wasn't completely helpless and reminded him that he was still human.

Sighing, he started undressing, letting his unhappiness known by a constant litany of complains. Playing the spoiled brat was easy, it had helped him mask his discomfort for years and he could probably do it in his sleep. He _could_ do this, keep playing nice like he had done with the Ten Rings and get out at the first occasion.

To his surprise, the water wasn't exactly cold – which was fortunate, given his recent encounter with forced drowning – but it wasn't warm either, and he didn't stay longer than it was strictly necessary. Standing there wet, naked and shivering, he realized that his old clothes had disappeared.

"Hum, not to sound pushy, but am I really supposed to stay like that?" he asked, a little put out.

"Clothes later. Come," was the only answer he got before the man started walking.

Fortunately, Tony noticed the towel that had probably been left for him on the floor and grabbed it, tying it around his hips before following. He was led to a small room with a narrow bed that looked like it came from a Romanian orphanage and two chairs, one of which had simple gray clothes – a shirt, boxers and flimsy trousers – on the back. The soldier sat on the other one, still as emotionless as before.

The engineer only put the boxers on before slipping under the cover and falling asleep.

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><p>He woke up feeling more rested than he had since his escape from the Ten Rings, or probably even longer, even if he was still far from his best.<p>

Which was nice, but not enough to make up for the fact that he was being shaken awake by a goddamn psychopathic-looking HYDRA henchman.

And the metal fingers were not exactly pleasant where they dug in his shoulder.

He opened his eyes and sat up, hoping for the manhandling to stop. It did, and soon a tray was shoved under his nose. He accepted it and started eating the frugal breakfast that was on it. The food didn't taste very good, but he was hungry and so didn't complain.

"So, what am I supposed to do, today?" he asked his guard as cheerily as he could fake it. "Got troubles with your Starkphone?"

Predictably enough, the man stayed silent. He was still looking at him unwaveringly, and Tony found himself staring to be sure that he blinked. He did, but the blank face was still unnerving.

He didn't try to get a rise from him again, and as soon as he had finished his meal and put on the clothes they had given him, the soldier grabbed him by his arm and marched him through the door, a hallway that was closed by checkpoint on regular intervals – which shouldn't disappoint him since it was highly unlikely that his guard would let him go anywhere he wasn't ordered to – and to a room where the old man from the previous day was waiting for them.

"Good morning, Mr. Stark, I hope you slept well?" he greeted him with a voice that reminded him of some of the most vicious businessmen he had come across in his life, saccharine and threatening at the same time.

"Yeah, well, the awakening could have been better," he answered with a bright, fake smile. "Not sure I can give you more than two stars."

He looked around him, keeping his smile on. The room was small and almost bare, but its main feature was obviously the big black chair standing in the middle. It looked a lot like a dentist chair, but with restrains on the arms and a strange circular device above the head. Was it supposed to go around it? Tony had a very, very bad feeling about this...

But the part of him that wasn't busy being terrified by the whole situation or disgusted by what looked an awful lot like a torture device, the one that had eyes for machines and weapons, efficiency and numbers, noticed that there were wires sticking out of the thing, that it probably didn't work, and that he was probably supposed to fix it.

As he reached this conclusion, his host answered.

"Rest assured that we do everything we can to accommodate you. Now, I assume you know why you are here. We want you to repair this. You will start working today; you will be provided with the original blueprints and all the tools you will need. I trust that it will only take you a few days."

The alternative was not enunciated but clearly implied, and Tony didn't say anything, starkly aware that he did not have the upper hand and that opening his mouth would only bring troubles. After a pause, the man smiled thinly.

"Very well, I shall let you get started, then. Asset, guard him."

He left without another word, the door clicking shut behind him, and Tony swallowed. The soldier did not move from the corner he had posted himself in, impassive.

He turned to the chair: no sense waiting for tools to try and get an outline of the problem. Apparently, it had been shot at...

That was when his brain caught up with his eyes. There was something wrong with the restrains. Why were there padded on one side and not on the other? And there was something that looked a lot like an electromagnet built in the steel one.

Dread building in his stomach, he turned back to the metal-armed man who was guarding him.

Well, then, he probably had his answer, didn't he?


	2. Chapter 2: Mixed signals

Thanks to equalopportunityobsessor for betaing this chapter!

Same thing as last time, if you see something wrong, please just let me know...

Merry Christmas everyone!

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><p>"Hi, Robocop," Tony grunted, waking up in much the same way as he had the day before.<p>

He was provided a meager breakfast, was directed to put the gray clothes on, and was marched back to the room with the chair. Apparently, this was going to be his life now. He wondered how often he would be allowed to shower: the day before, it hadn't been on the menu.

He had studied the blueprints of the chair for hours already, and while the idea filled him with distaste, he knew that he now had to start working on it or his babysitters would get suspicious. After all, it _was _a pretty simple mechanism: the structure was fine, and the part that was damaged was only a rotating piece supporting a batch of electrodes, that incidentally had exactly the right shape to clamp around someone's skull.

Tony decided to start with the mobile part. He had no intention of actually repairing the thing, but maybe, if he had a day or two, he could think of something?

He took a screwdriver and climbed on the chair. After five seconds of staring, he knew what was wrong and that less than an hour would be required to fix the part. Another ten seconds later, he had also found nine ways to slow his progress, which should give him a two-days respite. It was supposed to be very precise, after all.

"Hey, Yins-" he started before stilling, berating himself. That was stupid, he knew where he was, and he definitely didn't need to appear weaker. But the silence was gnawing at his already wavering sanity...

"Hey, Terminator, pass me the blueprints, please?"

The man didn't react to the nickname, but after a few seconds during which Tony thought that he was going to be ignored, he obeyed.

Well, he could work with that. The guy definitely lacked conversation skills, but apart from that – and the fact that he couldn't run complex calculations, but at the moment that wasn't really a concern – he would be an acceptable assistant. Maybe he could even be convinced to do some heavy lifting.

It wouldn't be like Yinsen, of course. He was more likely to break his neck if he caught Tony trying to escape, for one. But he didn't really look tech-savvy or interested by Tony's progress enough to discover his stalling, so as long as Tony at least looked like he was working, the man definitely wouldn't give him more to worry about than the cameras he could see in the corners.

A few minutes later, he stopped working, frowning. The thing was heavy, and he couldn't hold it and work on its underside at the same time. He glanced at the soldier's impressive musculature from the corner of his eyes.

"I could use a hand here, Darth Vader," he said, the metal awkwardly held up by his shoulder, digging painfully in his skin.

The man didn't take the cue and kept watching him coldly. Tony frowned.

"Come on, I can't do this all day, jerk!" he growled, because _damn_ his shoulder was sore, and it shouldn't even be a problem except that he was not nearly as fit as he had been a few weeks ago, what with the whole being starved thing, and that asshole was just looking at him as if he didn't understand.

The soldier's brow pinched slightly, and for a moment his eyes darted to the side, his focused expression turning almost _lost_. He stepped closer and opened his mouth, licking his lips.

Then he slammed violently into the engineer, his left shoulder first, sending Tony crashing to the ground with his charge so hard that his vision briefly blacked out. The man was kneeling on him, metal hand pushing down on the arc reactor.

"Do not try to distract me," he growled, "you won't escape."

"Wasn't trying to..." the prisoner wheezed, stunned. He could already feel his jaw swelling and it hurt and _what the hell is wrong with this guy?_

But then he noticed the soldier's expression. He didn't look angry, like his tone of voice seemed to imply, but rather scared, his eyes unfocused, as if he was watching something happening far behind Tony. Or inside his own head.

The genius stayed as still as he could while his guard breathed heavily. After a few moments, the pressure on his chest eased and the soldier rocked back on his heels, allowing him to scramble back and rise up on his elbow.

That had been unexpected. And _terrifying_. He had absolutely no idea what had just happened.

The guard was back to his usual impassiveness. He got up, and, as if nothing had happened, lifted the part he had been asked to.

_What the fuck was that all about?_

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><p>He woke up in the middle of the night, and, for once, it wasn't because of his nightmares.<p>

The key word in this sentence being "his".

The soldier, who was still sitting in his chair, was twitching and muffling small, broken sounds in the heel of his flesh hand. It took Tony a few moments to realize that his eyes were closed: he was still asleep. It was the first time he could see him less than perfectly watchful.

Careful not to make too much noise, the engineer got out of his bed. In the three days he had already been in this place, during which he had been continuously shadowed by the soldier, it was only the second time he had seen the man look human, and he still didn't know what had warranted the first one. What was he dreaming about?

Tony had a thought for his own nightmares, the ones filled with young soldiers and explosions, with stale, icy water and cruel eyes. He reached for the sleeping man.

A fluid motion later, he was thrown against the far wall and slid to the floor, the soldier looming angrily above him. He gasped for air and raised his hands.

"Wow, sorry! I won't do that again!" he cried out, stunned.

The man didn't answer, but he stayed still for long enough that Tony started to tense, expecting a blow that didn't come. Instead, he blinked slowly and went back to the blank indifference that seemed to be his default expression.

"You're an idiot," he finally said with a small frown. "You'll get yourself killed."

And for a minute the genius was speechless, because the man's voice had changed, and it wasn't neutral, it was exasperated and fond. And his accent, which until now had been mostly unrecognizable but maybe hinting slightly toward Eastern Europe, was now marked enough for Tony to recognize it as American, likely from New York. As if the soldier had taken someone else's voice and words. And for the first time, the engineer wondered whose they were, and who they were addressed to, because it was certainly not him.

Actually, it raised a lot of new questions: the soldier seemed young, not older than thirty, if you forgot about the dark circles under his eyes. He couldn't have been with HYDRA for very long. Who had he been, before? Where did he come from? Eastern Europe or America? How did he lose his arm?

Of course, Tony had already wondered about his loyalty to HYDRA when he first started working on the chair, and later when it became obvious that its function was to deliver a strong electrical current through someone's brain. He wasn't sure about it, because despite being a genius he still didn't like biology, but he was at least half certain that the part it was meant to target was the hippocampus, and he thought he remembered reading something about the role it played with memory.

So there was definitely a chance that he could get the man to help him if the device didn't work correctly. Which was nice, because it meant that this could actually serve him, even if he still never would have voluntarily repaired what was so obviously a torture instrument.

Of course, there was also the possibility that the HYDRA scientists would know what he was doing, and in that case he was setting himself up for a world of hurt, but he refused to consider it. If they needed him to repair the damages – and they did, no matter what they said – it was highly plausible that he was the only competent engineer they had at hand.

"Go back to bed," the now-back-to-impassiveness soldier said, interrupting his thoughts.

Nodding, he rose gingerly, mindful of the new bruises he could feel on his back – because after last time that was exactly what he needed... – and laid down under the cover, knowing well that he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep for a long time.

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><p>The following morning, he was taken aback by the arrival of a dozen guards in his little room as soon as he finished his breakfast. Their weapons were drawn, if pointed down.<p>

"Stand down!" the leader barked, raising slightly his rifle.

Tony stayed still, keeping carefully his hands in sight of the newcomers. Eight of them circled the Winter Soldier, who stood up and followed them outside of the room. The engineer sighed internally: apparently, this wasn't about him. Which was probably good news, but he had hoped that maybe the change in routine meant that he would be allowed to take a shower: he hadn't had one since his first day there and he was beginning to _stink_.

But the remaining soldiers, who looked much more relaxed since the others departure, only brought him to the same room as usual, where the man who had shown him the chair in the first place – and who seemed to be running the place, so Tony had taken to calling him "the director" in his head – was waiting for him. Tony steeled himself for an unpleasant conversation at first, but had to hold back a smile when he noticed how uncomfortable the man looked. Was he scared?

"Good morning, Mr. Stark," he started, probably unaware of how obvious his discomfort was. "How are the repair going?"

_So that's what this is about_, the genius thought. _A timeline._ And he would bet his considerable fortune on this sudden urgency being related to the Winter Soldier's strange behavior of late.

"Well, if nothing go wrong I should be done in five days," he answered with a forced smile.

The man scowled. "I am sure that you could go faster if properly motivated. You will be done in three days, and then you'll be allowed to shower," he answered with probably as much authority as he could muster, which didn't really impress Tony. He was used to dealing with impossible deadlines set by generals, and knew the value of wildly overestimating how much time he needed. He could do it in three days, but if he had said that in the first place, they would probably have demanded that he be done for the next day.

The prospect of a shower was a nice one, too. He had been expecting threats rather than bribery, to be honest. Tony nodded, conscious that his well-being still heavily depended on his compliance, and was relieved when the man, apparently deciding that he was obedient enough, left him with two guards without another word. Ignoring their silent presence in his back, he went back to his work.

It was high time to start repairing the electrodes. It wasn't as if he really needed to put it off any longer: he had convinced a bunch of (uneducated, but that was a minor detail) terrorists that he was building missiles instead of a giant suite of armor; he could rewire the thing discretely. It _would_ hurt like a son of a bitch for anyone unlucky enough to get the thing around their head, but hey, thousands of volts through the cluster of nerves in their nape would still be better than thousands of volts frying their brain... hopefully.

A few hours later, he was surprised by the return of the Winter Soldier, who posted himself in a corner, staring intently at the engineer and ignoring the other guards who seemed to be somewhere between awed and terrified by him and left immediately. His movements were back to the focused efficiency he had displayed during their first meeting, in the desert, an eternity ago.

"Back so soon, sweetheart?" he said with a cheeky smile. "Did you miss me that much?"

He didn't get an answer, but he wasn't really expecting one. He had spent the last few days with the man and had yet to find a way to rile him up. Except for that weird bit when he had asked for his help for the first time, and the previous night, of course. But Tony's chatter and nicknames didn't seem to faze him. The genius took full advantage of it, happy to be able to run his mouth as he pleased without the expectation of a beating when it slipped.

He then noticed the tray the soldier had been carrying and grinned. Food. He started digging in gleefully: they apparently still thought that they didn't need to starve him to force him to comply._ As if threats could break me..._

But after a few mouthfuls, his thoughts took a sudden dark turn: he cringed when he remembered that the only reason why he was currently working and being fed enough, and not curled up in a too cold room like a few days earlier – or worse, because he doubted that he had seen the worst of it – was because of the attack on the base he had been kept in. He wasn't broken, that was a given, but he could have been.

His appetite gone, he pushed the tray away. He had to find a way to get out of there, and soon. His captors resources were low enough that they needed him to work for them; it would probably not last, and if he waited too long, he would be utterly screwed.

At some point, they would ask him for something he wouldn't be willing to provide, and seeing how willing to hurt him they had already been, he really didn't want to know how they would convince him.

On the other hand, giving them the Jericho sounded even worse than giving it to the Ten Rings.

He shuddered and went back to his work, trying to fill his mind with formulas and schematics instead of cold water and car batteries.

* * *

><p>Two days later, Tony nervously connected the last wire. He wasn't scared that he would fail. If anything, it was the most confident he had been for months: unlike the armor he had built in the cave, this was not even a technical challenge. But the previous few days had worn him out. The Winter Soldier behavior had been... erratic, to say the least.<p>

Most of the time, he had been the perfect guard, never letting Tony out of his sight, to the point where Tony wondered whether the soldier had eaten at all during the last week. He probably slept, but apart from that first nightmare, Tony hadn't been able to catch him at it. He never acknowledged the engineer's attempts to talk to him, but was also never really violent, which made for a welcome change. He hadn't spoken for any other reason than to give him orders since the nightmare, and there was no hint in his voice of the American he had sounded like at the time.

But at times, he would stare into the empty space. Tony suspected that he didn't really know the extent of it: he only noticed it when he moved out of his previous line of sight and the man didn't react. And he would knit his brow in an expression that only reminded Tony of a lost child, which was completely stupid since he was well aware how dangerous and utterly terrifying the Winter Soldier could be. Maybe that was Stockholm syndrome finally kicking in...

And on two occasion, the engineer had tried handing him things while he was in this state. He had crushed them when he had jerked back to himself. Literally crushed them, including a steel screwdriver. He tried not to think what would happen if his hand got in the way in this kind of situation.

Regardless, the genius tried very hard to remember that the man was not actually on his side, but between his lack of brutality and the suspicion that he was not the one in control at all, he had a strong tendency to see him as a potential ally. Especially if the chair worked (or in this case didn't) like he hoped it would.

Breathing slowly and hoping that his jumpiness wasn't too apparent, or that it wouldn't seem out of place, he straightened and brushed his hands on his shirt.

"I'm done," he declared.

A few minutes later, ten guards and the director appeared in the room. They trained their weapons on him at once and Tony raised his hands before being forcefully shoved to his knees.

"I hope for your sake that it works, Mr. Stark," the director said, a mix of anticipation and nervousness obvious on his face.

The engineer didn't answer, more interested in the arrival of three men in white coats, obviously technicians or doctors, who made a beeline for the chair and started pushing buttons. Blinking lights started to appear and one of them waved his hand, which made the hands that were painfully digging in Tony's shoulders relax fractionally. His repairs looked genuine enough to fool them, then.

"Sir, it is ready for the asset," one of the technicians said.

"Very well. Wipe him!" the director barked in answer.

Tony turned his eyes in time to see the Winter Soldier – did they really call him "the asset"? – undress with military efficiency, leaving him bare-chested. One of the guards shoved him forward and he stumbled to the chair before sitting in it, face blank.

It was something to suspect who the chair was made for, and another to actually see him in it. Tony felt nauseous. He hadn't thought that they would let him watch, and that wasn't a pleasant surprise.

One of the men in white placed a small piece of rubber in front of the soldier's face, and he took it in his mouth before being shoved backward. He tensed up; the restrains slowly closed around his arms.

As the top started moving, Tony could see the soldier's chest rising and falling more and more quickly. Fascinated and disgusted in equal parts, he saw the electrodes he had been working on a few minutes earlier close around his skull.

For several long moments, it was silent. Too silent. Tony sucked in a breath, about to sigh in relief, thinking maybe he had been wrong, maybe his calculations had been off, maybe the chair wasn't meant to hurt at all -

Then the Winter Soldier screamed.


	3. Chapter 3: False move

Sorry for the long wait, I'll try to write a little bit faster next time...

Thanks a lot to **equalopportunityobsessor** who is a wonderful beta and has helped me a _lot_.

* * *

><p>Tony felt sick. What he had witnessed earlier that day had badly shaken him.<p>

It hadn't really been the pain of the soldier; that he had expected. No, it was his behavior after being freed from the chair. The engineer thought that he would pass out, or be catatonic, or even fight at least a little against his handlers: not be so utterly _pliant_. The soldier had seemed as weak and lost as a newborn, but when the men in white ordered him to get up, he instantly obeyed and left the room between two guards who were only half supporting him. After what they had done to him, despite the pain, he still kept obeying them...

Tony knew about blind obedience, the kind expected from soldiers in the army: he had grown up almost surrounded by military men. But that was something else. He had heard about brainwashing, of course. It didn't make witnessing the results easier.

After that, as promised, he had been allowed to shower, watched by a few guards, and had managed to wait to be alone in front of the toilets before throwing up.

Now he was curled on his bed, one hand on his mouth, attempting to physically hold back the nausea that was still rising. Strangely, he had been left alone inside. He knew that there were guards posted behind the closed door and he could see cameras in the corners, so they weren't really taking any chances, but he still wondered what had warranted the decrease in security.

The director, apparently satisfied by his work, had promised him that he would start on something else the next morning. Of course, it was nice to know that he hadn't outlived his usefulness, but he didn't want to work on another torture device.

He raised his head when the door of his cell opened, and was stunned to discover the Winter Soldier standing in the doorway. After a few seconds, the man closed the door behind him and went to his chair.

_Are they fucking serious? What are they playing at?_

It made no sense at all. The soldier was clearly well enough to stand by himself, which was completely impossible given the voltage he had received, but why send him – their best fighter, given the caution which he was treated with – to watch Tony, who had no way to get out by himself and nowhere to go? If they didn't trust him enough to stay in his monitored and guarded cell, where he had access to nothing technological (apart from the arc reactor, but he needed it to live and it wouldn't last long anyway after powering the armor if he put any kind of strain on it), then why would they let him work on any of their tech?

The soldier was perfectly still, but Tony could hear his breathing. It was scary, how long he could remain in one position without moving at all. He, who had never been able to stay more than a few minutes in one place without fidgeting, could not fathom the amount of patience this man had.

He laid in bed for what felt like an hour, still unable to sleep, not helped the slightest by the presence of a man who would be entitled to hate him now and could probably kill him with his left thumb.

Suddenly, a small, choked sound reached his ears. He frowned slightly, realizing slowly that he could no longer hear the soldier's breathing. He raised himself cautiously, and was strangely relieved to see the man still sitting in his seat. His metal hand was pressed against his own mouth in a bruising grip.

"Hey", Tony said quietly, "are you alright?"

It was a stupid question and he knew it. The man was _anything_ but alright, it was obvious. While his back was still perfectly straight, what little of his face wasn't hidden behind his hand was tensed in pain.

The only sound that escaped him was a continuous muffled litany that Tony couldn't understand before coming closer.

"Please stop please stop please stop _please stop please stop-_"

He startled back, his nails biting into his palm. What the hell was he supposed to do? He had no idea where the soldier thought he was, but it was probably not there, and had no experience with this kind of situations. Yinsen would have known what to do. Tony didn't: he was a fuck-up, not a doctor.

Yet he couldn't even consider leaving him to it. Guilt was gnawing at him. He knew that whatever it was, it probably had to do with the chair. How could it not? The soldier's screams were still burnt into his memories...

He got out of the bed with slow movements, careful even if the man didn't look able to register his presence. He had learned from the last nightmare and didn't try to touch him, but instead crouched in front of him and tried talking to him.

"Hey, whatever you are remembering, your not there anymore, please look at me... There is nobody else around and you could probably kill me with you pinkie, you know that? Come on..."

He kept babbling, not really paying attention to what he was saying, for a good ten minutes. His throat was starting to ache because although he was quiet, it was the most he had said since Yinsen's death. There wasn't anything nice about the scene he was looking at: he could see the soldier's metal finger digging into his own cheeks, and after a while blood started leaking from behind his hand, probably from his lips. Yet he felt almost... _good_, especially as the soldier's breathing started evening out and his moans stopped. He attributed this improvement to his feeling useful and helping someone else, not pausing to consider any other explanation (_now you're no longer the most fucked-up person in the room __**shut up it's not like that**_).

After several more minutes, the soldier let his hand fall away from his face. Predictably enough, it was bruised, with marked indents in his skin, and his lips were bitten bloody. He opened his eyes and focused them on the engineer.

"What the-" he started before stopping himself, looking bewildered.

There it was, this New-Yorker drawl Tony had heard once before. The genius stopped rambling, relieved.

"Are you okay?" he asked, unsure what he was supposed to do now. What was the etiquette in this kind of situations?

"You... Who are you?" the soldier asked, a bemused dent in his forehead.

Tony stared. _What the hell am I supposed to answer to that? Hello, I'm your prisoner?_

He settled for "You don't remember?"

"I, uh, no," he answered, still dumbfounded. "My head hurts."

"That's... not unexpected," Tony winced, still feeling guilty. "Will you..."

His voice trailed to nothing as he saw the soldier's lost expression disappear in a matter of seconds into his usual blank face. The man absently rubbed his temples once before turning back toward him.

"What are you doing? Go back to bed," he ordered with a small frown.

Stunned by how fast things had gone back to normal, Tony wisely decided that he was not going to defy his guard tonight and climbed in his bed in silence, sneaking glances toward him. It was as if the last twenty minutes hadn't happened. Did the guy have multiple personalities? Actually, that made sense. He didn't know much about mental illnesses, but he didn't need to to see that the kid had a few loose screws. Maybe that was what was wrong with him, and the chair had been part of some sort of electroshock therapy.

_Right, and those guys aren't __Nazis__, just __philanthropists__ trying to help him._

Anyway, he really liked the New-Yorker better than the emotionless HYDRA goon. He only hoped that he would have more occasion to see him in the near future.

* * *

><p>In the morning, Tony was lead to a room he had never been in before. It looked a lot like the one with the chair – the engineer was starting to think that this building hadn't been built with a focus on diversity, or, for that matter, on esthetic – but this time the thing he was supposed to repair was some sort of tank equipped with an impressive amount of medical captors and... a cooling system? What the fuck?<p>

So the bad news was that he had no idea what he was doing and whether he should also try and sabotage it. Or how he could.

The _very_ good news was that it was significantly more complex than the chair, which meant that he wasn't working with two wrenches and three screwdrivers anymore. The circuitry of the thing was completely fried: he needed new wires, and he had a power source for the soldering iron. And he wouldn't need much to built a small radio, strong enough to send a message up to a hundred miles away in the right conditions. If he was lucky, he could reach someone from the army or something similar. He knew that no matter which country he was in, he was famous and important enough that he could warrant a rescue mission.

So the future was definitely looking brighter.

Of course, the director had expressed his hast to see the device repaired, but there hadn't been any threats this time, so Tony guessed that they weren't in a real hurry like they had been with the chair.

He had been separated from his usual guard as soon as he was up, and was instead supervised by two goons who seemed bored to death and only half focused on what he was doing, which was perfect because it meant that he could sneak small pieces of equipment he needed and hide them in a corner of the structure of the tank. He wasn't going to spend too much time at once on it – he wasn't stupid and knew how suspicious it would look – but the thing was massive enough that it could easily mask his hands while he pretended to work on the cooling unit in its base.

While he studied the parts of the thing that he could recognize, and they didn't seem like they could hurt anyone, he wondered what its function was. The tank was empty, but it was probably supposed to be filled with liquid, or maybe some kind of gel. It could be used to preserve things, like a fridge, maybe? But then it lacked a lid to close it... On the other hand, there were empty hinges on the side, so it had probably been taken off. And what could be so important that they would need to save this particular device from the base they had fled? It wasn't even that complicated, he couldn't see any part that couldn't be found pretty easily on the internet, there was no special component that was that hard to acquire, even legally... And it wasn't even containing anything at the moment, that was what made it so strange.

He was so lost in his own head that he didn't notice the Winter Soldier returning and the other guards leaving before hearing the loud crash of dishes breaking on the floor. He jumped and whirled around, his hand instinctively coming to cover the arc reactor.

The soldier was standing there, frozen, his eyes wide open in silent horror. He had been carrying a tray, probably with Tony's lunch on it, but while the grip of his left hand had stayed steady, his right one had let it go and the tray was now dangling uselessly against his thigh while the food had fallen to the floor.

Half trying to understand what had happened and half bracing for an attack or a punishment, Tony stayed there, perfectly motionless, for several seconds before reacting. He took a few steps back and raised his hands.

"Whoa, what's happening, big guy? I didn't do anything!" he exclaimed frantically.

The soldier didn't seem to hear him and let go completely of the tray, which clattered loudly on the floor. Soundlessly, he walked to the tank, passing and ignoring Tony, and bent above it, his hands coming to rest almost reverently on its edge. His face showed a naked mix of fear and anticipation, and his hand were tensed so hard that the left one was already denting the steel slightly. The knuckles on his flesh hand were stark white from the strain.

He didn't seem to be violent, but if the last few days had taught Tony one thing, it was that the soldier was about as stable and predictable as a wild horse: he backed until he was as far from him as he could without leaving the room. Beside, even if the man himself didn't attack him, he wasn't sure that people from HYDRA like the director wouldn't accuse him of causing this new development.

Which, now that he thought about it, might not be completely wrong. He _had _rendered the chair harmless.

But nobody came into the room, and after a while, the soldier's stare lost its focus, his expression relaxing slowly, until he was only standing there with his hands hanging loosely at his sides.

He eventually turned his gaze to Tony, who shuddered although it wasn't hostile. The soldier pointedly looked back to the tank, then to the engineer.

"Okay, okay, I'm coming..." the genius grumbled, cautiously approaching the device and the guard.

When nothing happened, he resumed his working halfheartedly, his mind going at full speed. What did the tank usually contain? Probably something of importance to the soldier... It was big enough to fit a tall human, but its content could have been far smaller.

Great, another riddle. Exactly what he needed.

* * *

><p>Tony was on his back on the ground. It might sound uncomfortable, but at the moment, it wasn't bothering him enough for him to register it through his anticipation.<p>

"Come on..." he gritted through his teeth, fiddling with the mechanism of the device, a small metal box with a dial on it.

Suddenly, the small blinking red light turned green. He barely repressed a loud cry of joy. The signal was sent.

Now he only had to hide it, and that was easy. He was hidden under the tank, he could screw the radio in a corner and it would be impossible to see it without crawling.

Suddenly, he heard the door of the room open and almost knocked himself out by jumping and hitting his head.

"Fuck..." he growled.

He got out of his hiding spot and on his feet in a few seconds, in time to see the director, who had come with a few guards, close the door behind himself.

He had no idea why they were there, but it couldn't be good. He had been very cautious about it, but they could have caught him, it was always a possibility.

With a quick glance, he made sure that the soldier wasn't spacing out. It happened more and more often every day, and if the chair had been supposed to fix that, then the engineer had to make sure that nobody noticed it. But the man's eyes were trained on him, like they usually were.

"Can I help you?" he asked with the plastic smile he had perfected for nosy journalists and arrogant congressmen.

"I just wanted to make sure that you had everything you needed," the director answered, his voice saccharine but his eyes sharp.

The man looked around the room, his gaze lingering briefly on the soldier, who didn't pay him any attention, his eyes still fixed on Tony. The engineer frowned, surprised by the intensity of his focus. Even if he rarely ever spoke, the soldier usually reacted when his superior was nearby.

Not willing to take any risk, Tony decided to keep the director's attention focused on him. If they knew about the radio, he would know by now. Probably because it would hurt _a lot_, but he was trying not to think about this eventuality.

"Of course I do," Tony answered easily, "I mainly need time to understand how this thing work... It would help if you told me what it is supposed to do."

"I don't think that you really need to know that," the director shot back with a sharp smile. "I'm sure that you can guess."

Instinctively, Tony's fingers went to his arc reactor and started tapping a pattern. If they wouldn't tell him, it meant that it was bad. Unfortunately, unlike last time, he had no idea what the global function of the thing was, and thus didn't know how he could make it dysfunction discreetly.

However, his thoughtful silence was too long and the director's eyes went back to the soldier, whose eyes were still locked toward Tony but had lost part of their focus.

_Shit, he's doing it again! _Tony realized that the man had probably been looking toward him before his mind slipped away, which meant that if the engineer moved – or if the director asked him anything – they would very sound find out about it.

"No, really," he said hurriedly, frantically trying to think of something to say. "You might as well be asking me to build you a thing that flies, but not telling me if it needs to be an airplane, or a helicopter, or a hovercraft, or whether it runs on gas, or diesel, or is _solar powered_, should I be space conscious, or do you want room for a quickie in the back? I need _details_, not even I can make bricks without clay."

The director's eyebrows rose to his hairline and his lips thinned in a coldly amused smile, but Tony had reached his goal. Now the director's and the guards attentions were on him.

"I think that you don't fully appreciate your situation, Mr. Stark," the former answered. "You _will_ repair this, and you are in no position to make demands. I think that you do not need any more information to comply. Maybe a reminder of your place would be beneficial."

He snapped his fingers – seriously, could he act _more_ like a villain from a B-rated movie? – and one of the guards stepped forward. Tony braced himself, already cringing.

The first blow was expected but no less painful. The second one threw him to the floor; he instantly curled on himself, his knees protecting his stomach and his arms in front of his face. He was getting pretty good at taking beating, and wasn't that a depressing thought?

Well, that told him one thing: if he was going to persist in helping the Winter Soldier, which was a gambit in itself because he couldn't be sure that the man would help him back instead of selling him out, he definitely needed deflecting tactics that didn't end up with him acting as a punching-ball...

* * *

><p>Two days later, still sore from his last beating, Tony was woken up by being roughly shoved to the ground by two guards. He blinked wearily, unable to resist as they shackled his hands behind his back. They pulled him upright, and he barely managed to get his feet under him before they started marching him to the tank room.<p>

The director was waiting for him there.

In his hands, a small metal device that blinked red.

Tony's eyes widened. He felt breathless, as if the guards had already started the beating he could feel coming.

"Hello, Mr. Stark," he greeted him with a cold, hard smile. "You are an engineering genius, aren't you? Then maybe you could explain to me what this is, and what kind of message it is sending..."

_Fuck_.


	4. Chapter 4: Back to the drawing board

**Warning: possibly triggery content including torture, panic attacks and suicidal thoughts.**

This chapter was beta-read by **equalopportunityobsessor**, I can't thank her enough for it.

So things are finally getting serious. Don't hesitate to tell me what you think about the story, constructive criticism is always welcome!

* * *

><p>Tony was frozen on his feet. They had found him out.<p>

He saw the director's lips move, but couldn't hear him over the thundering of his heart. He felt like the ground had been swept out from under his feet, and he was in free fall: for now, everything seemed to be happening far away, but he knew without a doubt that he was going to hurt _a lot_ and _very soon_.

His mind was whirling, trying to imagine what was awaiting him. He didn't think that they would kill him: they needed him too much, and if they wanted to, they could have put a bullet in his head at any point of time. But they would punish him. How?

They didn't have anyone to use as leverage against him, so torture, probably. A beating was unlikely, because it would have to be too serious and would risk damaging him too much. They wouldn't risk touching his head, or his hands, for that matter.

Not for the first time since his capture, Tony wished that he wasn't a genius – it would certainly make the rest of his life much _nice_, not being able to picture in exacting detail the myriad of ways in which he could be tortured, twisted and mangled, but still function.

He was brutally shoved forward by the two guards that stood behind him and stumbled before following them, stumbling over his own feet. They took him to another room, one he had never been in but whose function was pretty obvious. A hook was stuck in the far wall; on the side, a tray covered in sharp instruments glistened ominously. He was trying not to think about the fact that there were gutters in the floor, because there was only one kind of fluid you could expect to stain the tiles in a room like this.

The guards marched him to the wall and untied his hands long enough to raise them above his head, where they were fastened to the hook. In this position, his entire front was exposed to whatever punishment they saw fit to deliver.

The director walked slowly to him, the Winter Soldier trailing behind. With a condescending smile, he raised the small radio that was going to cost him so much to Tony's eyes.

"Did you really think that we wouldn't notice it?" he asked. "You are not nearly as subtle as you think you are, Mr. Stark. This was useless. There is no one close enough to help you."

He let go of the device, which fell to floor with a rather pathetic _thud_, and the engineer sagged into his bonds. His chances of escaping had already been thin enough, but now they had dwindled to nothing.

"Now, Mr. Stark, you need to understand that the only reason why you are alive today is because HYDRA let you live. And we cannot tolerate such behavior. Asset, the pliers," he ordered, obviously far too pleased with his little show.

Tony's face drained of all color as the soldier went obediently to the tray and selected the aforementioned tool. Then the metal-armed man knelt down at the genius' feet.

Tony couldn't breathe, couldn't think through his panic. It was like the cave... No, it was far worse, because this time he had _nothing_ that they wanted. He couldn't negotiate to make them stop. They would hurt him as long as they wished to. He had reached the end of his luck: there was nothing he could do, no miraculous invention, no smart retort, no money between them and him.

The soldier inserted one end of his tool under the nail of the engineer's big toe and started to apply pressure.

Tony started howling and begging instantly, all concept of pride or dignity forgotten.

He didn't stop until his voice broke completely, and then dropped away to small whimpers.

The soldier kept going.

* * *

><p>When they took him off the hook, he fell gracelessly to the floor. He ignored the shouted orders to get up, barely able to even register them and knowing that any attempt to put weight on his feet was doomed to fail. Instead, he curled on himself, his forehead hidden against his knees, his eyes closed against the outside. Everything around him was so loud and painful that he could only try to shield himself against the light and wait the agony out. He was mindlessly hoping that if he made himself small enough, they would forget about him.<p>

After a while, they stopped talking. He had an instant to be relieved before being pulled fluidly over someone's shoulder. Probably the soldier's, given the metal that was now digging painfully into his stomach.

The move wasn't brutal in itself, but the engineer was on his last nerve: he started silently sobbing, unable to stop. It didn't really matter, after all, it wasn't as if he had any dignity left to protect.

Tony kept his eyes screwed shut until the metal-armed man put him down on his bed, where he curled back. Apparently, his punishment was over. That was fortunate, but he couldn't really enjoy the freedom since he still had trouble forming thoughts. The pain had been terrible, but at some point it had stopped mattering, and now he felt like he was floating outside of his body, disconnected of the sensations and emotions he knew he was experiencing.

He could move, but it felt as if he was struggling in thick cotton. He could hear and feel, but it came through a heavy haze and he couldn't gather the energy to concentrate on anything. Intellectually, he knew that this kind of mindset wasn't really healthy, that it should worry him, but it was so much _easier_. Not having to care. Some sort of respite after the constant pain of the last few months.

As he came slowly back to himself, the first sensation that drew his attention was oddly... nice. Maybe it did so because it was so out of place: it was without a doubt the nicest thing he had felt since Yinsen had died. There were fingers in his hair, petting him softly, untangling the curls and scratching his scalp.

And _that_ was what it took to bring him to tears, something he had blessedly managed to avoid until now. Painless human contact. It sounded pathetic (_it__** was – **__Stark men are made of iron you don't need __**that**_).

The hand didn't stop. After a while, Tony's sobbing slowed down, though his eyes were still flowing abundantly. He could hear someone talking next to his ear.

"Come on, Stevie, breathe," the voice said, "you can do it. Breathe with me."

A few slow, deep inspirations followed. The engineer did his best to obey, and soon his sobbing subsided completely, allowing him to realize how heavy his chest felt: it was much worse than the usual weight of the arc reactor. He had probably been hyperventilating.

But when he raised his head, the soldier flinched and his hands jerked away from him, pushing him back. Tony whimpered at the loss and the spike of pain the movement brought. The soldier's eyes cleared and his lips thinned in a displeased line, but smoothed soon in a reassuring smile. Before Tony could get his bearings back, the man bent down to gather him in a one armed hug. Stunned and lost, Tony let his head rest on the other's shoulder, unable to decide how he should react. In addition of his thick fog his thoughts still had to wade through, he couldn't even remember the last time someone had hugged him. Even Rhodey at his drunkest didn't go that far.

After a few seconds, his hands came to rest on the man's back, but apart from that, he had no idea what he was doing. He was fairly certain that the man who was touching him was The American, as he had taken to calling him, the one who talked like a New-Yorker and seemed not to know where he was; he couldn't imagine in which situation the otherwise emotionless and perfectly competent soldier would act this way.

And he was still talking, a continuous ramble too low for Tony to understand everything, but which sounded like a litany of reassurances, the kind that could be used to soothe a sick child. But... Had he called the engineer _Stevie_?

Nervous, the genius almost started fidgeting before being brusquely reminded why he had been crying in the first place. His nail-less toes had brushed against the rough fabric of the bedding, forcing a whine of distress out of him. Now that he wasn't so removed from his sensations anymore, he felt every thread of agony coming from his feet and had to bury his face in the soldier's neck to keep from crying out.

Without missing a beat, the man started rubbing Tony's back, comforting in his very solid presence.

The genius had no idea how he managed to drift off after that, but the soldier hadn't let go of him when he woke up.

* * *

><p>Several days later, Tony still hadn't resumed working. It could have been a worrying sign that his usefulness was being rethought, but he knew that it wasn't what this was about. It had probably a lot more to do with the fact that he still couldn't get out of his bed.<p>

His feet were red and swollen and still ached so bad that the slightest contact with anything other than air on his battered toes was excruciating, but now he was also burning from a fever that showed no sign of abating. He was half delirious most of the time. He was almost certain that at some point a doctor had come to check on him, and had been hooked on an IV he had displaced at least four times since (not on purpose, though he probably would have if he could) but his state hadn't improved. If anything, it was getting worse.

He knew that they had starved him during the first two weeks he had spent in the other HYDRA base and since then he had never been allowed to recover completely, so it stood to reason that he would be weak, but the traumatic circumstances in which he had been hurt were doubtlessly also to blame: he honestly didn't know if he was going to heal. At this point, death felt like a very real possibility – one that, even if it didn't make him proud, wasn't nearly as appalling as it had been a few days earlier. Even if he didn't die, he would only stay there, as a prisoner of HYDRA – or worse, if their knowledge of brainwashing was as thorough as the existence of the Winter Soldier seemed to imply. He done what he could to escape, but it hadn't been enough. Maybe it would be simpler to just stop trying and throw himself on some guard's weapon.

The soldier, on the other hand, was getting better and more coherent every day. He hadn't left Tony's bedside for longer than a few minutes at a time (between the two of them, the air of the room smelt bad enough that anyone not living here kept their nose scrunched up the whole time they were inside), and while at first most of it had been spent staring at the walls, his range of facial expression had soon expanded to include a confused one – he wore that one a _lot – _and a pained one that apparently came from the vicious headaches he frequently suffered.

Tony had some ideas about what they came from, but lately he wondered if they weren't also a sign that the soldier was healing. He looked more human every day. And, to his great surprise, while he usually stayed silent, his reaction to the engineer's distress the first time hadn't been a one off. Now all it took was for Tony to have trouble breathing – whether it was from the pain, or from those terrifying episodes when he couldn't say where he was anymore, the cave, the cold room and the base blending in a swirl of panic and terror – for the soldier to start talking to him like a child, comforting him with soft words and softer touches.

He still called him Stevie, though, so you could probably bet that the man wasn't completely conscious of their surroundings at those times.

Fortunately, when the doctors came they stayed focused on Tony and the soldier mostly ignored them, so for now nobody seemed to have noticed his strange behavior. Although why the cameras hadn't picked it up, he didn't know, but since he was still alive and they hadn't been separated, he had deduced that they weren't monitored.

But today seemed different. Tony felt coherent, the fever and the pain weren't too high for him to handle, and for the last thirty minutes the soldier's eyes hadn't left his face. It was pretty unnerving.

The silence stretched on; while in his usual state Tony would have said anything to avoid it, now he couldn't gather the energy to care. After all, when had speaking done him any good, recently?

Suddenly, the deep, raspy voice of the soldier broke his train of thought.

"Who are you?" he asked simply. His face seemed devoid of any malice, his eyes genuinely curious, if guarded.

Tony nearly jumped out of his skin. It was the first time the soldier addressed him while sounding conscious of where they were _and _while sounding like the American. The engineer fumbled for an answer.

"My name is Tony Stark. Who are _you_?" he asked back, curious.

"Stark?" the man frowned instead of answering. "Like Howard?"

_Have you lived under a rock for the last two decades, man? _He bit back the retort, both very surprised by the reply – these days, he was a _lot_ more famous than his father – and aware that he was still at the other's mercy. Of course, there was also the fact that for all he knew, the man hadn't been out of a base for a long time, and that keeping him informed had probably been the last of HYDRA's priorities, but let's be honest, tact had never stopped him from being rude before.

"In a way, yes," he answered instead, ignoring his irritation caused by the mention of his Howard. "He was my father."

"Your _father_?" the soldier exclaimed. "That's impossible, you're older than..."

His voice trailed to nothing and for a minute Tony feared that he had relapsed into his mindless soldier's personality (if you could call _that_ a personality). But the man blinked hard and spoke again.

"What year is it?" he asked in a faraway voice, his eyes shifting restlessly around the room, as if he was afraid of the answer.

"2009", Tony replied with a frown. "What year did you think it was?"

"_2009?!"_ the soldier shouted. Well, that was definitely not what he had been hoping for, if his anguished look was any indication. But what could he have expected? How long had he been in HYDRA's hands? He wasn't that old, but if he knew Howard better than Tony, it meant that it had been more than fifteen years. And older than who? Definitely not Howard, who would have been ninety years old by now. He had probably been more than sixty by the time the soldier had been born, and while Tony was ready to believe that his time as a captive probably hadn't improved his looks, he was still only thirty seven.

But the soldier had apparently already recovered from the shock.

"Where are we?" was the next question he asked, his brow furrowed. His flesh hand had come to rest on his temple.

"Hum, seriously, you don't know?" the engineer retorted drily, because seriously, _this place is run by Nazis and I'm your prisoner_ was a sentence he _really_ didn't want to have to say. "Well... Have you ever heard of HYDRA?"

The soldier's reaction was instant. His eyes widened, his lips thinned, his jaw clenched. He knew them and he didn't like them.

At this point, Tony was almost ready to admit that HYDRA had been mind-controlling him with magic, because none of this made sense: maybe it was possible to bend someone's mind enough for him to become a mere puppet to people he hated – the engineer knew first hand exactly how effective torture could be – and he was almost certain that the chair had been wiping his memories, but then it should have taken a lot more time and efforts for him to get his memories and agency back. Especially if he had been there for more than ten years.

Well, if he was going to trust the guy and rely on him to get out of there, and that was his intention, he needed to know more about him.

"Who are you?" he asked again. "I'll try to explain whatever I know to you but it would be nice if you could at least tell me your name."

The man blinked again and frowned. "I... I'm not sure," he answered after a beat. "I don't remember much. I think... James. I... I know that I hate HYDRA. I think that at some point I have been fighting them, but... My memories aren't clear. They... They hurt me."

Tony was ready to believe him. He looked completely lost. James? He could work with that.

"Then you will want to get out of here. We are in one of their bases, and you were supposed to guard me, I think," he started, deciding that the man was unlikely to betray him. "I have tried to find a way out, but... It didn't really work out for me. I was hoping that maybe you had some ideas..."

"Guard you? That's... Yes, that makes sense. It's strange, I had no idea what this place was, but I know the layout of the building, or at least where I could find weapons and an exit," the soldier said with a puzzled expression. "That could help. But you are sick."

Tony groaned. Now that he could finally hope for an escape, he wasn't going to let himself be stopped by something as stupid as his health. After all, it was probably way better to be dying from it out of there than to rest in this place.

"I'll get better, don't worry, I'm good at ignoring these kind of things," he deflected, his finger coming to rest on the arc reactor, thinking about the multiple times Pepper had had to drag him out of his workshop before he passed out from hunger, exhaustion, or on one occasion, a nasty infection (don't wipe an open wound, even a minor one, with a rag Dummy gave you, it is _not safe_). "If we could avoid firefights and explosions, that would be great, but otherwise I should be able to follow you. But we can't wait for too long."

"I'll think about it, then," James allowed with a shrug. "If you're sure about it."

He apparently had nothing more to say and Tony tried to resist the urge to speak for a whole five minutes – it wasn't the time to show how annoying he could be – but didn't last long. After all, he was curious, and entitled to some explanations.

"By the way, you talked about 'Stevie'," he started casually. "Should we be looking for him on our way out?"

The soldier's face closed so suddenly that Tony shut up and winced, half expecting a blow.

"Who the hell is Stevie?" he growled, his voice dead and cold and his tone suggesting that the whole conversation was over.


End file.
